David looked at the line and watched as a few women came out. He recognized one of them as a girl that had gone in after Iona. David walked closer to the door. He couldn’t go in. He looked at one of the digital clocks posted along the wall. She had been in there for over twenty-five minutes. Sweat broke out over David’s back, this was why he never wore button up shirts.
Another five minutes and David knew something wasn’t right. He went to a lady on her way out.
“Excuse me, my friend went in there a long time ago and she’s not out yet. Would you mind going in and calling for her? Her name is Iona, lots of dark curly hair.” The woman looked at David with scrutiny, “She’s diabetic.” David lied to give more purpose to his question.
“Of course,” The woman smiled sympathetically then went back into the restrooms. The woman came out three minutes later. “Nope, your friend must be somewhere else.”
Chapter Seven
Iona had waited until David’s gaze was turned to the crowds and for a large surge of people that she could easily hide away behind, before leaving the bathroom. She hadn’t really planned on shirking him but she didn’t want to be standing next to him anymore either. Her skin prickled with irritation. She’d trusted him, she’d liked him, then he’d so easily changed his mind in the light of day.
Iona walked along the halls of the arena looking for the athletes holding area. She’d left a message for her father but it hadn’t made her feel any better.
She had twenty minutes before her first sets and needed to have her equipment looked over.
The crowds went quiet as a group of men placed their marks. Iona watched them all with a critical eye. She could see the mistakes they were making before they realized it themselves. Everyone seemed to have their own unique way of shooting. A few with awkward or sloppy form still placed very good results.
Iona skimmed the crowds for David, then for her father, but she didn’t see either.
David’s phone rang from an unknown number. It could be her father, it could also be David on a stranger’s phone.
She didn’t want to risk it, “Hello.” She whispered into the phone.
“Where are you?” David’s voice was full of irritation. Iona hung up then slipped the phone into her bag.
An older woman with bobbed gray hair motioned for Iona and several other women she would be competing with. Iona stood. She was a nervous, butterflies kicking around in her stomach.
Though they had been motioned to stand they all waited another ten minutes for the men to retrieve their arrows.
Iona knew how this was to go, she’d studied it and practiced it, but she still felt like she might be doing something wrong. She waited for the indication then stepped up.
There was another signal and she raised her bow, aimed her arrow. Iona let it fly.
Straight to the center. There was a murmur from the crowd. Iona smiled lightly and felt the butterflies drift away. She continued on through the set and the next, strong. She moved everything else from her mind. Her father, David, the trip, the men. Everything drifted away as she raised her bow and arrow again and again.
As she moved into position on her last round she saw a flash of red blonde hair.
Iona’s attention was taken, her mind moved. She was off her mark. Iona exhaled a shaky breath. She would still place well, toward the top. She looked again for the hair.
It took a few moments of looking until she saw it again. The man moved along a line of spectators, she walked to her right trying keep her eye trained on the man. Then, David’s face filled the space.
Iona sucked in breath.
She was released from her group. She looked again and again, saw many men with nearly bald heads and a few with reddish hair but none of them the same.
“What were you thinking?” David was in front of her.
“I think I saw the man with the reddish blonde hair,” She looked beyond David but he put both hands on her shoulders and looked into her eyes.
“Why did you try to lose me?” David’s grip was tight around her shoulders.
“Didn’t you hear me, I think that man is here…”
There was a pressure on Iona’s back and she noticed David seeing behind her before she turned herself.
A small woman in slacks and a polo shirt was looking at her nervously. She was part of the staff. Immediately Iona thought there had been something wrong with her scoring, she was going to be disqualified.
“Ms. Fraser?” The woman’s voice was soft and unsure.
“Yes?”
“It’s your father, he’s been taken to Toronto General Hospital,” The woman handed Iona a note of paper with a phone number on it.
Iona took the paper, staring at it, as if the paper might tell her something more if only she looked at it hard enough.
“Why, what’s wrong?” Iona could feel herself on the edge of wildness.
“I don’t know, you should call,” The woman gave a sympathetic little smile then walked back into the shuffle of people.
“Let’s go,” David guided her before she even realized that she was moving again. His hand reached in her bag and before she could protest or even register the action he pulled out his cell phone.
David called for the driver then led Iona out. Once they were in the car they called the hospital.
“I’m calling about a patient, Coll Fraser, we just received a message… Right, we’ll be there in a few minutes.” David hung up the phone. “He’s in surgery right now. The doctor will tell us what’s going on when we get there.”
“Then why leave a message for us at all?” Iona’s voice was high pitched and frantic for her father. “Did she say what kind of surgery? Anything?”
David shook his head. She wondered if he’d had a heart attack, the doctor’s always gave him glowing reviews, she couldn’t even remember him ever getting a cold.
At the hospital David did all the talking. Iona tried to focus her mind the way she had during the tournament but she couldn’t, her brain felt fractured into tiny pieces all floating around her.
“Where are we going?” Iona asked David as he hit the elevator door.
He looked at her carefully, “Up to surgery, we’ll get more information then.”
Iona nodded, wondering if she’d already heard this information. David guided her around like he been there before, only turning the wrong way for a moment or two before correcting course.
“Your father is out of surgery now, but still coming out of anesthesia, you won’t be able to see him yet but I’ll tell the doctor you’re here.” The woman behind the desk was speaking in foggy tones and Iona nodded at her.
“Sit here,” David placed Iona in a chair. There were other people in the waiting room as well, none that looked as worried as she felt. Iona realized that David was gone and stood up fast.
“It’ ok, I just got you some water, sit.” David’s voice was calm and soothing. He put the cup directly into her hand, wrapping her fingers around it, and waited for her to sit back down before sitting next to her.
They waited for a good 45-minutes before the woman behind reception called to them. The doctor stood next to her and motioned for her and David to follow him out into the hall.
“Your father is doing well, the puncture was lucky, any further over and it would have killed him for sure.” The doctor looked old, perhaps too old to still be wielding a scalpel, and he bobbed his head as he talked.
“What puncture? What happened to him?” Iona looked at David to see if he already knew but he looked just as lost as Iona.
“Stab wound, he was brought in early this morning, found by some Good Samaritan—and lucky he was too. No identification on him, he gained consciousness for a few minutes just before surgery and told the nurse he had to go see you compete.” The doctor spoke slowly looking for signs of comprehension. “I’m sorry, I thought you’d already been told.”
“No,” David’s voice was solid behind her.
“He was very badl
y beaten, a broken rib, his face is very swollen, and stabbed twice. The police will want to talk to him when he’s awake of course, we don’t really know anything about what happened yet… the first stab wound was only flesh, an easy stitch up that happened early this morning, but the other punctured his liver. The loss of blood was tremendous…”
“But he’ll live?” David asked from behind her.
The doctor nodded, “It appears that way.”
“When can I see him?” Iona felt a drop on her hand and she realized that she was crying.
“When he wakes up. You’ll need to be calm, gentle… but he’ll be happy to see you.” The doctor patted Iona’s shoulder with a heavy hand.
“By the way” The doctor paused before heading back into the doors with no handles on them. "Did you win your competition?”
Iona breathed in, she’d forgotten all about the competition, it felt like a year ago.
“Didn’t win, but close to the top I think,” She tried and failed to smile.
“Your father will be happy to hear it.” The older man swiped his hospital identification against a gray panel and the doors opened for him then closed leaving Iona and David alone.
Chapter Eight
Iona and David spent the next two weeks in and out of the hospital. Coll had not recovered as easily as the doctor had made it sound, there had been an infection, another emergency surgery, and blood transfusion. Coll was constantly rolling between pain medications that put him immediately to sleep.
When the police had come by, Coll told them through his swollen face that he’d been attacked by strangers. They’d asked for his money then beaten him up even after they got it. Coll could not remember any distinguishing traits about them besides a general guess at their height and race.
David looked at Iona as her father gave this information, but she didn’t seem to find it odd, not that she was the best judge these days. Iona had been falling apart at the seams. Her father’s condition had left her unraveled and in a fog of near unconsciousness. She was barely able to converse as she always lost track of what had been said and would often break off mid-sentence into silence, or to change the subject completely.
Both David and Iona had been camping out in her father’s hospital room. David had taken all their clothes to a local Laundromat twice. They watched the small TV, show after show, for hours on end. Coll would awaken, moaning and in pain, then the nurse would come and dose him up again. They’d had to change his pain medication twice already. First, when his body had adapted to its effects and he’d reached his maximum dosage, and the second when the medication made him vomit.
Iona blamed herself for her father’s condition. He had caught her murmuring, “It’s my fault he’s here. We wouldn’t have come here if it weren’t for me.”
When he responded to her words she turned and looked at him with such wild eyes that he knew she hadn’t known she’d been speaking aloud.
David went to the cafeteria at least once a day to stock up on food for both of them but Iona barely ate. She would sometimes pick around her father’s uneaten food but hardly anything else.
“I ran out for a treat today,” David lifted a Deb’s Bakery bag. He’d purchased an assortment, croissant, cream horn, a scone, and a mini quiche in case she wasn’t in the mood for something sweet. David pulled out each one and placed it on a leftover plate from the day before.
“Oh,” Iona looked at the pastries. “Maybe he’ll eat one,” She said as if David had been trying to tempt her father and not herself.
“Yes,” he sat back in the chair that also acted as his bed every night.
“David?” Iona sat up. “You’ve been here long enough. You should go home now,” She said the words as if she’d been deliberating over them. As if it were the first time she’d said them.
“I already told you, no. I’m making sure you get home safely.” David closed his eyes against the TV.
The morning nurse came in. Rosa Lee still looked like a teenager, she had her hair slicked back into a tight ponytail and cat eye glasses straight out of the fifties. She was the most optimistic nurse, always answering questions when she could, and dealing with Iona’s fears by listening to her and responding when Iona thought her father needed something new.
“Today’s the day, how are we feeling?” Rosa Lee was an incredible morning person.
“The doctor’s still think it is ok for him to go so soon?” Iona didn’t agree that her father was ready to go home but the doctor’s wanted to get him out of the hospital. With his weakened immune system they didn’t want to risk another infection by keeping him.
“The doctor will be in before we sign the paperwork and then you can ask him yourself,” Rosa Lee smiled. The doctor had come in every day sometimes only for a few minutes. Always with the same words, the same bobbing head.
“How are we doing this morning?” Rosa Lee woke Coll though he was still loopy from his most recent dose of pain medication. “I’m going to take your vitals.”
Coll closed and opened his heavy lids a few times, then nodded.
“How did you sleep?” Rosa Lee asked Coll.
“Terribly,” Coll’s voice was raspy and ill humored. He looked to his daughter, who smiled just to hear him speak, then to David, then back to the nurse. “I’m leaving today?”
“Your daughter arranged the helicopter and as long as the Doc gives you the green light then you will be waking up in your own bed tomorrow.” She strapped the blood pressure cuff to his upper arm and popped the thermometer into his mouth. The little machine next to Coll’s bed started reading off numbers and Rosa Lee wrote them on his charts.
“I’ll be back soon,” Rosa Lee said before leaving. “Let me know if you need anything.”
Iona moved to her father’s bedside.
“I don’t think we should move you yet, what if you need something here?” Iona placed her hand around her father’s large one. David could see the love and pain in Iona’s eyes. She looked even more beautiful in her worry. Her cheeks had become more prominent as the days of eating less and less went by. Her eyes glowed with love for her father.
David couldn’t take his eyes off her.
“I want to be in my own bed, it will be good for me.” Coll lifted his hand and patted Iona’s forearm. “Everything is already arranged?” Coll looked to David.
“Yes sir, the helicopter will take you to the island, Jinx and Lettie know you are on the way and will settle you in with the help of a nurse once there. Your family doctor will see you and you will do follow up with the hospital in town.”
“And you will see Iona safely back?” Coll looked at David with clarity.
“Absolutely,” David nodded. There was no room for Iona and David in the helicopter, which was a big reason for Iona’s misgivings about leaving the hospital. At first she flatly refused. But it was no good, no room meant no room. They’d only been able to commission a smaller model and the hospital would not airlift a patient to go home. They’d hired two nurses for the trip who would settle Coll in at home as well.
David and Iona would catch a flight later in the day and they’d be on the Island not long after Coll arrived there himself.
“The people,” Coll continued—losing his way among words and stalling out tiredly.
“What people, daddy?”
“The ones who did this to me, they were men from the Mac Alastair clan.” Coll looked at his daughter but David knew that he meant for David to hear it too.
“But why did you tell the police you didn’t know who they were?” She looked at her father’s face and realized she was asking the wrong question. “Why would they do this to you? You haven’t been in Scotland in two decades, what could they want with you now, so far from their home?”
Coll sighed, “Hundreds of years worth of hate. There was a lot of blood shed on both sides.”
“My mother?” Iona had heard fragments of the story but when she’d spoken of it to David she’d made is sound as much as
gang violence was in America.
“Yes, we… it goes back too far and now we are the last of our line.” Coll’s eyes were red rimmed from so much drug-induced sleep.
“The men I saw,” She turned to David. “The two with reddish blonde hair and the one with the bald head.”
“Yes,” Coll nodded, “They won’t stop until we are destroyed. It is retribution at its best.”
“But what of our retribution, what of my mother, wasn’t that enough?” Iona had begun to cry though David hardly thought she realized it. She’d tried to maintain a cool front every time she spoke to her father since he’d come to the hospital.
PARANORMAL ROMANCE: Pregnant by the Dragon Shifter (Shapeshifter Protector Pregnancy BBW Romance) Page 4
